


Stay

by girl_wonder



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The road is constant and even when the villain changes faces with the season and the home changes with the state, the road is there and the tires are the slap slap slap of reliability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't seen the last episode, yet, so there are only spoilers up to "Skin." Opening line was inspired by "The Things They Carried."

This is not a war story. It's a story about the road and how after a while the road begins to feel comfortable, reliable, there. The road is constant and even when the villain changes faces with the season and the home changes with the state, the road is there and the tires are the slap slap slap of reliability.

Sam wakes up halfway to Oklahoma. He goes back to sleep listening to Art Bell, the irregular background noise of his childhood. His father had hated the man, hated the way that crackpots got on and talked and talked and talked about things that they knew nothing about. That was usually when Dean would sullenly change the channel to country music.

Art Bell, purveyor of all things unusual and unreal, to Dean he was a god for that one time, someone had called in and mentioned them. Dad had been furious, crazy with the idea that someone out there knew who they were and could hurt them, but it had been worth it to see Dean's face when he realized that someone out there cared.

That night had been warm in the summer wind, Dad asleep across the campfire, Dean and Sam curled together on the ground so Dean could point out the stars. Not that Dean knew any real constellations and when Sam had tried to fight the teacher and say *no* that was not the Big Dipper it was the Black Dog that Dad had killed before they had begun hunting, well, he nearly failed and it didn't help that he was having trouble reading. So, that was the year that Sam had to stop participating in weekend hunting trips.

He still had to go, because Dad trusted a babysitter like he trusted a lawyer, and he still had to train. But all the hand to hand stopped when the school called social services about the bruising, so then it was just weapons training. This was until the next year and a new school, when Sam was already so in love with books and words and math that they had to drag him on weekend trips.

Sam still feels more comfortable with a handgun or a throwing knife then he does when Dean and he spar in a Walmart parking lot at three in the morning.

He feints left, but Dean catches him around the waist and they both go down hard. Something inside of Dean gives an ominous crack and Sam tastes blood when he swallows. He tries to get up, until he feels the cool blade against his neck and hears the, "Tap out."

Rules for hand to hand have stayed the same since they were kids. It's not over until someone breaks or taps out. Tapping out was for wimps, which was why the bruising had always been so deep and so colorful when they were kids. Tap out, Sam. Dean's voice was usually close when he said it, almost goading, almost pitying.

Sam slams his head back, grabbing the knife wrist before it can rebound and do some damage. He's got his knees up under him and he uses his leg muscles to push Sam off his back. They've been fighting for years and Dean's nose just fractured. Someone broke, fight over.

"Shit," Dean says, but he says it admiringly.

Sam shrugs. They need to find a doctor.

Road again, Dean checking to see that it's staying set in the visor mirror. They stop in a small town to sleep and get gas, end up killing the local ghost woman and get free cookies from her great-great-great-granddaughter. The woman works as an ER nurse and checks Dean's nose before she lets them go. It'll heal, have some more cookies.

Occasionally, Sam feels like his whole body is one big scar, like every part of him has been reformed by hunting. The act of it has not simply taken his time, but has taken his body and reshaped it into something streamlined to do this and only this. In a courtroom, he would have been a shark, vicious and caged.

Here there is road and road and road; endless stretches of it appearing in the dark under the headlights. Here there is a fight and a purpose.

If he asks Dean about it, about the reshaping and the changing to fit the parameters of perfect fucking hunter, Dean will laugh and nod. It's something Dean would get.

He doesn't ask, and they hit a stretch of farmland in Arkansas. A vampire hiding in wheat fields, dead and some compensation from a cooperative of farmers. Road again.

They are becoming frenetic with each kill, aimless, but still moving. There is no goal, no map. Dean says one random day that they need to find somewhere to settle for a month, so that they can earn enough cash to cover the next stretch... The next stretch of what, Sam wants to ask. Dad is somewhere out there, a beacon of knowledge and a huge secret that they keep within themselves, aching for it.

It's funny to Sam sometimes that for all of his post-teen-years-rebellion, all of his hating and his anger, he now follows his father's rather irregular, twisting path through the states like it's a pilgrimage. Pay holy tithe to the devil's ghosts in the form of warm blood and pain. Kill them all.

Before this, Sam had not really thought too hard about Dean's reasons for hunting, a youthful ego-centrist view that allowed him to escape the family business without visible scars. Now, when Dean slips off his shirt, cotton giving way to skin with scar-white lines and clean black tattoos, Sam realizes that the distance between them can't be fixed until his own body bears the same memory of desperation.

Instead of apologizing for the years of separation, he traces the druid circle around his name on Dean's shoulder. "It doesn't work as well on flesh," he says.

"Yeah, well, it worked to keep you safe, didn't it?" Dean glances over his shoulder. "You going to patch me up or not?"

Road again. They stop in a safe house that belongs to another hunter, wait until the deep cuts heal and the bruising no longer wakes them in the night. Sam sometimes reaches across the bed to curl against Dean the way he did when they were kids sharing a sleeping bag. He used to remember what Jessica's warmth felt like, now he smells Dean's distinctive sleep smell and thinks that he's safer here than he's been anywhere ever.

In the years between them, Dean's become the hunter that he always could have been without the ties of Sam and love and protectprotectprotect. There is a cruelty in the way that he ties a night walker down and waits for sunrise. It's as ugly as the deep, thoughtful scars on Dean's back that look like torture to Sam's trained eyes.

Dean has safety tattoos scrawled across his body like art and Sam knows that to Dean love is an art, something foreign and impossible to translate into words.

Road again and they end up in Florida, hitting all of the bayous that are being haunted. Sam gets scratched by an old witch doctor skeleton and gets patched up again by a new-age wiccan tattoo artist. She carves Dean's name into his skin, circled around with careful protection spells. Sam's blood is sacrifice, his soul is raw with the pain of killing.

When they finally run out of cash, they settle in a huge city where people never look too hard and ghosts are traceable by their years of history. During the week, Dean works as a convenience store clerk and Sam manages one better by getting a job at the library. They come home every night and don't really think about how it looks, two kids living an aimless life, coming home bumping shoulders and trading barbs. Until the day that the middle-aged gay couple down the hall invites them to dinner and tells them that they need to get their lives on track, Sam doesn't think at all.

It's always Dean that picks up the act first, the "yes, mam" of an officer the "don't do that," of a lover. This time, Dean sits back and doesn't say anything. Sam glares and says that Dean's his smarter half, and he's been trying to get him to go to college since they graduated.

Dean smirks.

A few weeks after that, it's enough money and Sam makes nice with the couple while Dean packs. Road again. They hit the Atlantic coast by accident, running as fast as they can towards Virginia and a hotel bill with Dad's name on it.

They accidentally run in with a ecimmu, a foreign demon that seemed to be relieved when they showed up. Warriors at last, it spits in a soft dark ancient language. Dean is the one that translated it, later.

"How do you know?" Sam asks, fingers touching his new white bandage.

"We ran into one a few years ago," Dean says, while wiping off some of the silver knives. "A good one. Taught me a few things."

Sam wonders where Dean gets all of his new moves sometimes, because they fight now like they did when they were kids and still learning each other's styles. This time they're relearning each other in a way that feels so much more permanent. He reaches out and Dean hands him a cleaning rag and a knife. Between them the silence is not as deep as it was, with the unheard accusations and pain.

end.


End file.
